Ukraine in the Second World War

Abstract

Ukraine had barely begun to recover from the traumas of the 1930s when it was plunged into the cauldron of the Second World War. It was the largest Soviet republic which the Germans occupied in full, and it was held longer than parts of Russia which they were able to seize.1 In the course of the conflict 6.8 million people were killed, of whom 600 000 were Jews and 1.4 million were military personnel who either perished on the front or died as prisoners of war. In addition, over two million citizens of the republic were sent to Germany as ‘slave labour’.2 By 1944, when the German armies were cleared from Soviet Ukrainian soil, the republic was literally in ruins. Over 700 cities and towns were destroyed — 42 per cent of all urban centres devastated by the war in the entire USSR — and over 28 000 villages. Direct material damage amounted to 285 milliard rubles (in 1941 prices) or over 40 per cent of the USSR’s losses. But the real costs of the war to the Ukrainian republic (damage, war effort, goods requisitioned by Germans, etc) are estimated at an astronomical one trillion two hundred milliard rubles (in 1941 prices).3

Documents from the Smolensk party archives, which were captured by the Germans during the war and thereafter fell into Western hands, provide much evidence of this. For example, a secret police informant reported the following conversation: ‘Now, comrades it appears that war is approaching. Soviet rule will not last long, it will tumble in an instant… People have been robbed and taxed heavily… I, like many others, will not go to defend Soviet rule.’ ‘Svodka no. 7, April 1933 (OGPU 3/0)’ Smolensk Archives, reel 20.Google Scholar

HURIP, no. 441, B6, 2; no. 32, B6, 1. It should be noted that although it was known that the brunt of the Nazis’ extermination policies would fall upon the Jews, the administration made little effort to evacuate Jews as such, rather only Jews who were prominent in the party, state and other institutions were moved.Google Scholar

Dallin, German Rule, p. 65; V Samarin, The Years of Turmoil. (In the German-Occupied Regions of Russia from 1941–1944),’ unpublished manuscript, Research Programme on the USSR, Columbia University.Google Scholar

In early March 1939, at the same time as the Nazis occupied Bohemia and Moravia, Transcarpathia, which had been part of Czechoslovakia in the inter-war period, was presented by Hitler as a prize to Hungary for the latter’s alliance with the Berlin-Rome Axis. The same month the Carpatho-Ukrainian people proclaimed the independence of their territory and with the help of the OUN took up arms against the Nazi-backed Hungarian invasion. They were defeated and this region from 1939 to 1944 was part of Hungary. See Peter C. Stercho, Diplomacy of Double Morality: Europe’s Crossroads in Carpatho-Ukraine 1919–1939 (New York, 1971).Google Scholar

For example, although the activities of the Ukrainian Catholic Church were curtailed, it was not suppressed. It should be noted that in 1940, Bukovyna, part of Romania in the inter-war period, was occupied by Soviet troops and incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR.Google Scholar

Koch was captured by the Western powers and turned over to Poland in 1950 for prosecution as a war criminal. It took Polish authorities nine years to bring him to trial and then only for crimes committed while Gauleiter of East Prussia, a post he held prior to heading the Reichskommissariat Ukraine. In 1959 Koch was sentenced to death, but the sentence was never carried out. Koch lives under favourable conditions in the Polish prison of Barczewo. The USSR has never asked for his extradition.Google Scholar

89.

Considerations of space do not permit a discussion of Romanian policies in Transnistria. These have been examined by Alexander Dallin, Odessa, 1941–1944: A Case Study of Soviet Territory Under Foreign Rule (Santa Monica, 1957).Google Scholar

‘Memorandum by an Official of the Department for German Internal Affairs, 6 August 1941’ and ‘Memorandum by the Chief of the Reich Chancellery, 1 October 1941,’ in Documents on German Foreign Policy, vol. 13, pp. 290, 319.Google Scholar

See Ibid., as well as Volyn’, 23 August 1942; Novyi chas, 12 July 1943, for a detailed discussion of Koch’s agricultural policies which fail to mention the distribution of land. See Ukrains’kyi visnyk, 4 April 1943 for an excellent analysis of rural life in Soviet Ukraine under German occupation.Google Scholar

In part this was dictated by Eastern Ukraine’s terrain which, unlike Volyn’, contained few forests. The wooded areas which could offer cover were in the north, bordering with Belorussia, and under the control of Soviet partisans.Google Scholar

Ibid., Suchasna Ukraina, 23 August 1956. Stakhiv, an OUN organizer in Donbass, claims that the Donbass Soviet underground did not produce a single leaflet during the German occupation. In fact two were produced. One by a village pioneer organization (!), another by a Komsomol group in Donets’k. This is hardly an impressive out-put given Donbass’s importance in Ukraine. See Lystivky partiinoho pidpillia i partyzans’kykh zahoniv ukrainy u roky Velykoi Vitchyznianoi viiny (Kiev, 1969). For a discussion of evidence from Soviet sources regarding the existence of a Ukrainian national underground in Donbass see Ievhen Stakhiv, ‘Do dyskusii pro Oleha Koshevoho,’ Suchasna Ukraina, 3 February 1957.Google Scholar